


By lamplight / marriage

by sshysmm



Series: 12 days of carnivale 2018 [3]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Happy Ending, Loving Marriage, One Shot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Romantic Fluff, like each other, they both deserve nice things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 03:38:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17093321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: 'In another lifetime, did he ever imagine what this night should be like? How it might be, in papered and panelled rooms, stepping with anticipation from his parlour to his wife’s, sliding beneath rustling covers still chill with the damp of Edinburgh winters, barely able to imagine the body of the one he shared the bed with in the dim glow of a demurely smouldering fire.'...Long after the end of the expedition, Harry and Silna seal their new relationship. PWP, essentially. Lamplight/candlelight, I'd already started writing this as a belated attempt at' fire and ice', but it's close enough to today's prompt, right?





	By lamplight / marriage

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh I really hope someone else wants to read this as much as I wanted to write it. I just want them to be soft and warm and happy together.

His mind is whirling like the snow outside the igloo. He stands rapt, still astounded to have heard those words come from his own lips — and then, beyond hope, from hers also. In so much, they have already shared more than any unmarried pair would do back across the sea, and not just in practicalities like the warmth of the single bed in her tent, or the duties of preparing and cooking the meat they catch. He can speak his truest thoughts to her now, and she is unhesitatingly honest in return. Really, they have been as close as husband and wife for so long already.

In all but one way.

She shrugs off her parka and her hands go to the hem of the inner layer of her clothing, and Harry’s heart somersaults, leaping like a hare from cover. In another lifetime, did he ever imagine what this night should be like? How it might be, in papered and panelled rooms, stepping with anticipation from his parlour to his wife’s, sliding beneath rustling covers still chill with the damp of Edinburgh winters, barely able to imagine the body of the one he shared the bed with in the dim glow of a demurely smouldering fire.

The women he encountered in Scotland, those who might have appeared in such momentary, idle dreams, they were not like the one who stands before him. She is fearless and unashamed, her smile sweeter than he has ever seen it. Silna takes off the second layer and she is left naked to the waist, a fur-trousered caribou faun, her eyes wide and — gratifyingly, shockingly — brimming with want. He is struck with wonder that such a beautiful being could look at him in such a way.

He removes his own parka, his hands trembling, loose-gripped. He cannot walk towards her as he would because his knees have been paralysed by a tingling, liquid weakness. Will she see that he hesitates? Will she think he does not want to go to her immediately? Her skin glows like burnished brass in the lamplight, flawless, embraced by curving, dancing shadows. Yet he is determined to keep his eyes on hers; he needs her to see all that he feels.

When he does not move she comes to him, her smile undimmed. She can see the rising of his chest, the red flush warming his neck and cheeks, and she knows him: emotion overcomes him, it holds him fast as she has seen it do before.

Silna tucks her fingers beneath the edges of his top, but leans close before she lifts it. She glides her cheek alongside his, nestling her nose into the vortex of curls where his hair meets the top of his beard. His breath tickles her neck and the skin below her ear, and she murmurs love and reassurance as she slips her hands inside his clothes, palms surprisingly warm on his skin, gliding smoothly up the sides of his body and bringing his top with them.

He must force himself to lean away, just for the briefest moment, as the clothing comes up over his head and a cold breath of air washes over his torso. The ice walls of the igloo seem to lap at his back and he rushes to close the distance between their bodies at the same time as she does. His fingerprints find the soft hollowed dimples at the small of her back, her hands sweep up the column of his spine, and her breasts press hot against him. He cannot keep the noise that falls from his throat, a gasped moan, a shivered prayer as he lets his head fall to her shoulder, a perfect fit against the curve of her form.

«There is a thing like kunik, but only for husband and wife,» he fumbles with the words, raising his face again to see her, bringing a hand up to cradle her cheek. «It is called a, a _kiss_.»

Silna watches him with anticipation, merry dimples at the edges of her lips. She does not close her eyes when he presses his mouth to hers, pursing a lingering kiss there. But she does not flinch or frown or laugh, she just looks at him with continuing wonder so Harry does it again, this time on the other side, and the pleased dimples deepen so he does it yet again on the edge of her lips, up the slope of her cheekbone, one kiss at a time. He does it until she closes her eyes, her face leant against his palm, her smile soft as a cloud.

Her kisses her lips once more and feels her respond, pressing back now.

«I like it,» she murmurs, the sound of the word a purr that vibrates through him to his core.

He takes her hips in his hold and as she walks backwards he matches her movement, treading gently, laughing breathlessly as he tries not to step on her bare toes where they flex against the long hair of the pelts covering the floor.

They leave their trousers mingled in a heap beside the bed pallet and she straddles him, leaning forward to press an experimental kiss on his mouth. Her nipples graze the skin of his chest as she bends, and his erection is pressed into the hot dark apex of her legs. With a confident movement, she takes him in her hand, her thighs flex as she rises, and she guides him inside, allowing herself a small moan as she eases herself lower with a roll of her pelvis.

Harry’s neck is an arc, his head pressed against the bedding. His hands are those of a drowning man, clasping for purchase up, up, up her legs, feeling the strong muscles quiver as she begins to move rhythmically. His expression calls her to him, and she bends lower, closer, he can feel the heat from her body for she is a furnace, her cheeks and chest blooming like hot pink embers, her fire bringing sweat springing to his skin. She burrows her face into the spot between his jaw and his ear, her breath mingling with the sweat on his skin, her lips and teeth bumping longingly against him.

The men and women he grew up around would apologise for this natural act, would hide it, shamefaced and separated from pleasure. But what good does it do to believe this thing to be some sinful compromise? Harry’s body sings with love and the joy of holding another living person so close. Shame is discarded, left to go to dust in the wind and the storm outside. He is afloat and in love and he is alive with the person who loves him back. His chest fills with a ferocious gladness that all of the events of his life have brought him here, to this one.

Silna sits up and he has to tell her that she is beautiful, the words are plucked from him like the hot, moist air from his lungs. She is so beautiful: the colour of lamplight reflected in rippling shapes, her hands settling, steadying, splaying against his chest. Beside them and above them the walls of the igloo glisten, meltwater smoothing the surface, filling joins and fissures and flaws in the ice.

She bites her lip and closes her eyes, her brows lowered in a frown of concentration. This only flickers when he reaches impulsively to catch her swinging breasts in his hands, flicking thumbs gently across hard, brown nipples so that she gasps and clasps his grip harder with her own hand. The muscles of her legs tighten, he sees her belly quiver, a cry from her mouth as she pushes her body against him, tightening and pulsing around him as she sinks lower, inviting him deeper.

He nearly follows after when she comes, but then she slows and lifts herself off him, her hands in his hair, her face close to his. She rolls herself onto the covers next to him and he tumbles after her, his lips in pursuit of hers, kisses hard to soft and soft to hard covering her mouth, her jawline, her neck, his body bereft without hers against it so that he must place himself atop her to feel any warmth again.

She holds him in the cradle of her thighs now and he bumps and slides against her, their bodies hot and wet and slick with her pleasure. A desperation of want makes him clumsy, his hips misdirecting him until she holds onto him and he presses inside her again with a gasp of relief and a shivering, tentative thrust of his pelvis.

Instinct tells his body how to move, his arms find the strength to hold him up, and one of her plaits comes undone against the furs beneath her head. Coils of dark hair trickle from beneath her, and he spends a burst of energy by removing one hand from the bed, gently scraping her hair aside so that he does not catch it under his weight.

Silna reaches up and takes his face in her hands, pulling him close and sliding from kunik to kiss while his body presses onwards with determination against her. His mind seems to fill with bright light, a purity of emptiness, or rather a singular expression of love. He is suspended on this precipice and he wants only to fall, to feel the weightlessness of being beyond control, to have gone past the point of return.

It is the sound of her voice that releases him, a hum of pleasure against his mouth as she holds him close, his arms trembling, heart hammering so fast that she must feel it knocking at her own chest. He closes his eyes and rolls his head against her neck, the movement of his hips growing irregular, slowing as he seems to float, rising on the tide of sensation he no longer knows how to explain in medical terms.

Jumbled words of love spill onto her skin, a flurry of languages confused together. Silna wraps one warm leg around him, her hands smooth and comb his hair, and he feels her chest move with exhaled amusement before she murmurs that she loves him too.

They lie folded around each other, a burning heart within the sturdy ice house, limbs plaited together and silken furs pooled against bare skin. The wind outside sings a sharp-toothed song but Silna sings back to it, her voice low, her chest rising and falling beneath his head. Harry’s eyes close in peace, his fingers curl protectively around her shoulder, and she wriggles her toes under the cover of a hide blanket, reaching to pull it up over their bodies before she looses the rest of her hair from its dishevelled tie.

«Sleep well, husband,» she whispers.


End file.
